Apple TV not casting like Roku or Chromecast

[alsaxon]

This is a two-part question:



1. If I play video on my MacBook and cast to the apple tv it's fine until I venture off the page, then it shows what I'm doing as opposed to what I'm watching. With Roku or Chromecast if I cast video I can multitask and venture away and my video will still be seen on my television. Do I not have something set up properly?



2. In order to get audio to play through Apple tv, I had to change the settings on my MacBook. however, when I'm done using the apple tv it does not change it back, so each time I'm finished I have to go back into settings and tell audio to use my MacBook speakers. I don't have to do this at all with the chromecast or Roku it automatically knows who to hand the audio over too.

Note I was told if I upgrade to 10.11 El Captian it would work, but it still only mirrors, not streams. I can stream from Itunes only, otherwise I have to mirror.


Help!


MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Late 2013)

 

[benjitek]

Depends on whether or not the website has implemented AirPlay casting. If not, mirroring works but not as high of quality. At this point, it doesn't seem like AirPlay casting is ever going to become as common as Chromecast.

 

[Puonti]

1. If I play video on my MacBook and cast to the apple tv it's fine until I venture off the page, then it shows what I'm doing as opposed to what I'm watching. With Roku or Chromecast if I cast video I can multitask and venture away and my video will still be seen on my television. Do I not have something set up properly?

I have no knowledge of how Rokus work, but I do know that there's a big difference in the way you cast to an AirPlay device and a Chromecast:

1) AirPlay is a live connection between your source and target device. Your Mac, iPhone or iPad is downloading the video, recompressing it on the fly and retransmitting it to your Apple TV. You can lock your phone or tablet (not sure about the Mac) and it'll still continue retransmitting the video. If you're mirroring, the source needs to remain unlocked of course.

2) Chromecast possibly supports the above kind of casting too, but the way it works with content like Youtube is that the source device simply passes a URL to the desired content and the Chromecast device itself starts streaming it. You can turn the "source" device completely off and the stream won't be interrupted.

 

[besler3035]

If there's an Airplay icon on the video player itself, use that instead.

 

[tjwilliams25]

The reason you're having issues is because you are mirroring your screen instead of just Airplaying the video. If the website is using an HTML 5 player, like Youtube and most others, Safari should give you an Airplay button in the player window. I'm not sure if Chrome has adopted this and I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't because of their "casting" implementation.